Sen. Arlen Specter has some good advice for President Bush: Pick up the phone, talk to the Senate Democrats, and find a Supreme Court nominee who is “universally accepted” by both parties.

We are not optimistic that Bush will listen to Specter, the Pennsylvania Republican who now heads the Judiciary Committee. The president has often cited archconservatives Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas as his ideal justices. And as the health of Chief Justice William Rehnquist deteriorates, the president is under great pressure from his political base to replace him with an orthodox ideologue and force a showdown with the Democrats. But that would be a big mistake.